…To Create A Writing Empire

Kindle Ebook Formatting Made Easy

Ebooks are changing the publishing world in the same way MP3 files changed the music industry. At present Amazon’s Kindle is the King of the Hill of ereaders and is reported to be the driving force in ebook growth.

There are a number of recent news reports pointing out authors making a dramatic shift from traditional publishing to self-publishing, as in the case of Barry Eisler turning down a $500,000 deal from St. Martin Press, choosing to self-publish instead.

Other A-List self-pubbed authors like J.A. Konrath, Amanda Hocking and John Locke ignited the dreams of hundreds of thousands…millions(?) of writers and authors to publish their own ebooks.

There are tons of people looking to publish their own ebooks and going through the process of formatting them for Kindle. As a result, there are a vast number of video tutorials showing self-pub authors how to do this.

Given all the tutorials out there, I’ve not found a good “How to” resource that describes the best way publish a Kindle ebook. There are references that describes how to format your novel using an html editor, defining bookmarks and tags to specify the table of contents, cover, and start page in such a way that the Kindle device will recognize them.

All of this is daunting for most people. As novelists, you want to focus on writing stories and not figuring out software. There has to be a better way.

Then I found the Answer in an OpenOffice application called Kindle Template. It’s specifically designed to make publishing Kindle ebooks easy. It’s the only software you’ll need to publish a Kindle ebook on Amazon.

All you do is follow the simple YouTube video instructions for using Kindle Template. Once done, you upload the .doc file generated by the template application to the Amazon Kindle publishing site. No muss, no fuss – nice ‘n easy.

The file generated by Kindle Template contains all the tags and bookmarks necessary for a Kindle device, or one of the free Kindle reading apps, to be able to render the cover, table of contents, and book contents correctly. In addition, Kindle Template will take your text as it appears in your document and format it to appear exactly the same when viewed on the Kindle.

Considering the amount of time you’ll save and frustration you’ll avoid using the Kindle Template, the nominal price is well worth it – especially if you plan to publish a number of ebooks in the process building your own e-book empire.